


Firebrand

by cyan96



Category: a net of dawn and bones, 天使禁猟区 | Tenshi Kinryoku | Angel Sanctuary
Genre: Gen, ITS BEEN SO LONG, Michael's a pint sized little shit with nuclear power capacity, Raphael is internally sighing and rolling his eyes, THE MOST OBSCURE FIC I WILL EVER WRITE, aidan does not deserve this, but i found this in my files while doing a cleanup, i love these kids though so no regrets, time to reread a net of dawn and bones actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-28 19:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20431304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyan96/pseuds/cyan96
Summary: The kid that Aidan passes by on the street smells of burning and tastes of hellfire. Hellfire but stronger, cleaner, harsher, brighter, as if somehow the noxious gases of hell's volcanoes had been replaced with a nuclear sun. The terror inspired by the presence is the same though: all-consuming, all-encompassing, with a brittle edge of fury underneath the heat. It feels like Sword Aerial. It feels like Yaldabaoth in one of his fouler moods. Alarm bells scream in Aidan's head; five months out but he'd spent twenty five years in Hell, and now every single one of his not-quite-transitioned instincts are flinging themselves back to the forefront to tell him: run.(Aidan Lindisfarne's extremely bad day: featurng two archangels and a lot of collisions.)





	Firebrand

**Author's Note:**

> I can say with complete confidence that this is the nichiest/most obscure fic I will ever write. I have zero regrets.

The kid that Aidan passes by on the street smells of burning and tastes of hellfire. Hellfire but stronger, cleaner, harsher, _ brighter_, as if somehow the noxious gases of hell's volcanoes had been replaced with a nuclear sun. The terror inspired by the presence is the same though: all-consuming, all-encompassing, with a brittle edge of fury underneath the heat. It feels like Sword Aerial. It feels like Yaldabaoth in one of his fouler moods. Alarm bells scream in Aidan's head; five months out but he'd spent twenty five years in Hell, and now every single one of his not-quite-transitioned instincts are flinging themselves back to the forefront to tell him: _ run. _

Aidan doesn't. Somehow he's still aware enough to know he's in downtown, Intrepid, on a busy Saturday afternoon and thus there are people everywhere. This probably means his weekly therapy sessions are working. This also means that whatever the kid is, he has a lot of collateral to choose from if he decides to suddenly let loose. And whatever he is, he's _ certainly _ angry.

"Lindsifarne?" Church asks warily.

Aidan blinks, and - _ oops._ Apparently he's stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. Church is at his elbow with a duffle over her shoulder and a scowl on her mouth that Aidan recognizes, which translates roughly to an irritated _ "what now." _ Somehow she's already weighing an iron wrench in one hand. No one would ever say that Church was slow on the uptake. "Oh what _ now _" she says in unhappy tones.

"It's -" Aidan says.

"We were furniture shopping," Church says slowly, brow twitching. "Is this what's going to happen now? Random doomsay encounters while furniture shopping?"

Aidan doesn't really hear her. "The kid that was just -"

Church sighs, but maneuvers the grip on her wrench into a backhand. She pauses. "You mean that one?"

"Yeah," says Aidan, a little hoarsely. "Yeah that one." 

Like Aidan, the kid has stopped in the middle of the street. There's a dangerously rigid set to his shoulders that makes Aidan want to curl up into a miserable ball and disappear into a corner. He scrapes his tongue across the his teeth where he knows he's sparking - from fear, terror, anxiety, whatever. He can't seem to stop himself, even though he knows - meaning Aerial had quite literally beat it into him - that these guys can _ smell _ fear.

The kid takes a step forward. Aidan hears the quiet crunch of his boots on the sidewalk beyond the drum of traffic and other passerbys, the world narrowing to a point. He can't look away. First rule when you know you're screwed, Ariel had said: _ never take your eyes off the threat_.

Aidan doesn't. The kid isn't easy to miss: his hair is an actual race car red, not rust or ginger but red like a dye, except Aidan would bet Myrrh's sword that it's natural, and there's a dragon tattoo that curves from his cheek down to disappear under a mesh shirt. Between that and the leather jacket, the tight black shorts and black boots, he looks like a thirteen-year old with a rebellious streak the size of America and seriously questionable fashion decisions. 

"Well, that's a juvie record if there's ever been one," Church says, unimpressed but still wary. "But I'm not getting anything nefarious. Tell me what you're seeing, Lindisfarne - because I'm not." 

What.

For a second, Aidan transfers his stare. "You don't feel that?" 

Church eyeballs him. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to, though judging from your face it's nothing good."

"I uh, think that's an understatement," Aidan says."He's -" Aidan doesn't actually know what, but the kid smells too much like Hell for it to be a coincidence "Demon. Probably." And somehow cloaking himself. To _ Church_, who can see through Asura glamours just fine. 

Through the crowd, the kid pivots, a quick turn on his heels that's remarkably childlike. His scowl is fierce, his glare withering, but the roundness of his features and his lack of height makes it seem less threatening than it should be. Church seems unimpressed. Not Aidan though. It takes effort for Aidan to stay solid. Flame crackles where his palms swelter against the linings of his jacket pockets; He wants to flee. He wants Myrrth. Underneath the smell of clean fire, the kid's anger is like a high tide, and then his gaze zeros in on Aidan like a cat to frozen prey.

_Shit._

The kid opens his mouth. Aidan doesn't catch what he says, only the disturbing image of his canines filed to points. Half a moment after a glimpsed snarl Aidan is gone, dematerialized, running on pure ingrained habit to launch himself _ away._

He doesn't get very far.

Stone _ cracks._ A starburst of pain like a thunderbolt right above his breastbone, and all the breath is very abruptly slammed from Aidan's lungs. His back smacks a hard surface and keeps going, impact and momentum rupturing both the ground and what feels like every single bone Aidan has. When the world stops spinning, sort of, there's the distorted image of the kid standing above him, weak February sun at his back. The dragon tattoo. Live-wire eyes. He looks strangely, disortedly beautiful, with fingers of light spread wide behind his back like the shadow of wings.

That's _ definitely _ the concussion talking.

Aidan blinks, thinks woozily about the last two seconds again, and deduces he's been forced to go solid. Ow.

Outlines shimmer back into distinction. The kid. The sky. Rock, fragmented and broken. Aidan blinks again past the blaring pain but no. The scenery doesn't change. He has somehow been hit hard enough to leave an actual crater.

The kid's boot digs into his chest. Aidan breathes in, breathes out--

spits a plume of blue-white flame and _throws_ himself sideways.

Only for fingers to reach down and grab his throat and yank him up.

He's not tall enough to bring Aidan's feet off the ground but it's an effortless gesture all the same. Aidan watches, equal parts in bewildered shock and horror, as his fire breaks against the kid's face and dissipates in silvery streams. It leaves no mark. That shouldn't happen. Okay, so the kid is evidently fire-aligned, but every creature's own power is unique. Even against Aerial in hell, it'd done _ something_.

It doesn't do anything now. The kid's snarl shows teeth, and his tone is like a serrated axe.

"You're not a demon, you're not a human - What the fuck are you?" 

"Addddmmm," gurgles Aidan.

"The fuck?"

"Huuummmmn," Aidan tries again, and scrabbles weakly at the fingers lodged at his throat. They don't budge. Shit. Shit. If this is how he dies, his second death, then that'll just be _ sad. _ God, please.

As if answering his wishes, the choke hold lets up, gravity reinserts itself, and Aidan meets a very unfortunate acquaintance with choppy rubble.

A steel-toed nudge flips him onto his side. "Oi, I asked you a question."

Aidan gasps: "Human." The kid's eyes narrow: not the right answer, shit, but it's not as if Aidan is completely on the pane of higher mental functions right now. "Demon. Half! I'm a half. Oh, _ ow _ you hit hard."

"I know," says the kid. 

Aidan rolls and gets his elbows wedged under him. He's trying to list the things the kid could be but all he's getting right now are pain spots and stars. "Er... good for you?"

The kid is supremely unimpressed. "So you're a Cambion brat. Who's your sire?"

"I think," Aidan says slowly, taking in the set of the kid's mouth, the terse line of his shoulders, the sword - which is taller than the kid is and polished to a gleaming shine and appeared out of nowhere - "that um. That might be better kept to myself? You look like you'd really like to kill me. I mean, either way you do, but at this point I think more so if I tell you."

"I don't care," says the kid. " Actually no, I do. Tell me so I can get to killing you fas_ter_\--"

"_Ding dong Ding dong hello kitty ding."_

"Um." says Aidan.

The kid's laser attention diverts from Aidan for the first time since like they'd met. "Fucking shit," he swears, but doesn't look bewildered so much as just increasingly enraged. He digs the hand not holding the sword into his pocket and comes out with a smartphone, ringing incessantly. He spins on his heel and wipes with undue violence across the screen.

"What the _ fuck do you want," _he says as soon as Aidan hears the call connect, and then his expression goes somehow darker with rage.

"Wait. what? What do you mean you went _ without _ me, I don't give a shit if I was late, there's some brat here that's -" an eyebrow twitches. 

Aidan can't make out the other half of the conversation, apart from the soft, distorted voice voice. It's older than the kid. Faintly accented. Male. Collected. The kid drops his sword and Aidan watches it cleave apart rock like hot butter even as he snaps, "No, Demon-half, what'd you think - No the city ain't on fire. No I don't want you over - don't you fucking _ dare _ -"

_ "Beeeeeep. _" 

Tone dial. 

The kid stares at his phone. Aidan stares at the kid, who's gone from "enraged" to “brain melting murder" through the span of the call. His jaw clenches. "I'm gonna _ flash fry _ him," the kid hisses, through grinding teeth, and the blue rhinestone phone case in his hand creaks ominously. 

Very carefully, Aidan puts his palms flat against the crater bottom, like a runner preparing for a sprint. 

There's a moment where his breath stills in fearful anticipation but the kid doesn't notice; his attention is wholly intent on the phone like it's the only thing in the world right now due for a lambasting, which is great, because Aidan definitely didn't sign up to be unceremoniously murdered for the second time today. The quiet charge up of nuclear flame he'd been preparing throughout the phone conversation trembles. 

He waits another beat. This isn't like his panicked, fear-sloppy getaway in the street square. Aidan sets the nuclear flame to blast, shoves himself up and dematerializes to pure fire, propels himself with the great rippling billow of the ensuring shockwave like a _ comet-_ _\- _

Third time is not the charm. 

A hand yanks the back of Aidan's coat collar. He chokes. The kid's voice says, "ain't fucking happening." 

And then he's thrown crashing back into the concrete a mile below at ballistic speeds, into what he glimpses half a heartbeat before impact is the exact same crater he'd just tried to exit. 

"Urrrgh," he muffles miserably, when everything stops ringing again.

The kid had knocked him down face first this time and Aidan's entire front is one giant ache, arms sprawled, eyes squeezed tight, his forehead crushed against gravel and pointy bits of rock. He raises his head with a frisson of pain running hot up his spine, vision blinking into sunspots and the kid's extremely unimpressed, slightly scornful, and still-pissed face. 

What the _ hell. _ He's-- too fast. He shouldn't be this fast. Compared to the rest of Yabbloth's court Aidan is relatively powerless and not at all good in a straight fight, which means that to survive he'd gained the instinct and skillset both to run away really, _ really _ fast. That'd been one of his tried and true getaway techniques; Aidan had been travelling at gunshot speeds. Can the kid _ teleport? _ And he'd forced Aidan to materialize to human-shape again, how did he do that. What the _ hell _ is he?

Sunlight glints off the kid's bloody hair like an extremely rusted halo. He scowls, his sword lifting in a speaking gesture to Aidan's head.

"Um," Aidan croaks. "Right. Can we talk this out?"

"No," says the kid, and looks ready to swing.

Only the blow never comes.

The sword blurs down a narrow inch and Aidan is halfway in throwing himself down desperately before the hand stops with perfect cessation of momentum. The kid's head swivels with whiplash speed, eyes narrowing to a point in the near distance.

For a second Aidan smells something like pine, and mountain snow. 

Then there's the sound of curtains in a billowing breeze, and there's a man standing on what was formerly an empty patch of asphalt. Aidan jerks, and nearly beheads himself on the kid's giant medieval sword. Fucking _hell._

The man-- although only god knows what he actually is-- sweeps a critical gaze around. He looks like someone off the cover of a fashion magazine, in a bespoke suit and posture that's beautifully elegant, hair gold in the sunlight, his hands tucked casually into his pockets. Like the kid, there's no glamour on him, and Aidan still hasn't figured out how that works- is human an actual form they can take?

The man finishes considering his surroundings and says, in a mildly disapproving tone: "Mikanou." 

The kid rolls his eyes. "Oh come on. it's a parking lot."

"I will celebrate your self restraint," the man tells the kid. His accent is hard to place, beautifully ennuciated, and the same as the voice on the phone. He looks to Aidan, gaze settling for a moment, before he sighs. "Mikanou, you remember, the random assault of humans is _ not good?" _

"It's a Cambrion brat," the kid scowls, crossing his arms.

"Yes. I can tell."

"Exactly!"

The man doesn't reply to that.

He steps to the edge of the crater. His shoes, the kind Aidan's father used to wear to court appointments, all Italian leather and meticulous stitching, stir up the dust.

The shoes are the first things to sharpen into focus when the man strides down the crater. Then his eyes: a pale, intent blue like a dry summer sky. He leans in with the kind focus that makes Aidan wants to swoop for cover -- hello, dangerous unidentified supernatural entity. Before Aidan can flinch back, one gloved hand reaches out to to grip his chin firmly between long, cool fingers.

Aidan doesn't actually know what the man does, only that between one very alarming second and the next every single blaring pain in his body vanishes into puffed smoke. He blinks, and feels as if he'd just slept a dreamless 24 hours and subsided on a diet of organic leafy greens and doctor-approved exercise his entire life.

"Better," says the man, and the fingers leave Aidan's jaw. 

The kid's expression screws like he'd just eaten an entire bag of sour candy. "Why'd you do _ that? _"

"It's a crime to leave such a fine visage looking as if it'd been introduced to the bottom of your shoe," says the man, and the kid's expression lurches into the patented teenage look: _ ew gross. _ The man steps away from Aidan to turn back to the kid, one eyebrow raised. "Was there an actual felony committed, or did you just so happen upon him on the street and clobber him over the head?"

The kid scowls. "He smells like Hell," he says, but there's a petulant note to his voice now.

"A little better, I imagine. And if I remember correctly, do you not have your fight with Alexiel in two hours?" 

The kid is unimpressed. "This brat doesn't need two hours. He needs like, 10 seconds tops. And I would be already done if you hadn't called!"

"Ah. Fortunate timing then."

"_You fuck._"

The man grins a little then, like the kid's murderous rage is a joke Aidan is really not getting. "I already ordered your pizza, you know. And Alex is at the shop. If you don't go now he will certainly finish--" 

The kid yanks his sword out of the gravel. There's a sound like a _ snap _ of air, and then the trailing howl of, "Oh man you gotta say shit like that _ first_!" before he's gone. 

Aidan blinks. Once. Very slowly.

The man's expression is fond, like the owner of a puppy who's just learned a new trick. "And there goes him," he observes, once the echo of the howl dies down. "Now...mmm."

His gaze is half-lidded and critical around the lamblasted surroundings. He brushes the invisible lint from his lapels.

It begins with what Aidan can swear is just an uplift in the breeze.

A rustle like the susurration of wind passing through leaves. Except they're in the parking lot, and there really _aren't_ any trees. Aidan's ears go strange after that, as if sound itself is being sucked from his surroundings and coalescing elsewhere. Something like a melody is singing through the air, distant and very close at the same time. Harps. A plucked string. The man, Aidan realizes after a second, is humming. 

And then the parking lot _ rewinds, _ and trying to find the origin of the harp noise is the least of Aidan's mental acrobatics.

The whip whips in. That's the first thing he notices. The wind flowing past his cheeks and through his hair before it touches the damage and sweeps it up, tumbles it lightly, undoes it like clock hands turning backwards. Concrete shivers. Glass and metal rearrange themselves into the skeleton of a warehouse. The drywall rebuilds, the canvasing and paint washes over. Parking lot asphalt smoothes underneath Aidan's back, parking lot marking paint draws white strips on the ground. The song sounds in Aidan's head and it's the fall breeze and dry air over desert canyons. 

The man stops humming only when everything looks pristine again. He considers it for a moment, head cocked, hands in his pockets still, before taking out a gilt edged cigarette box and a cherry lighter. He turns back to Aidan, cigarette between his fingers. 

"Your sire is Aerial," the man says consideringly, without giving Aidan time to refute or agree. "You should not tell Mikanou, I don't think. It'll do more harm than good."

"I--what?"

The man gives a little shrug. "Mikanou. You'll see him again, after his bout with Alexiel is over. Unless of course, something else catches his interest, but it's unlikely. " He says it very casually, matter of fact, as if Aidan suddenly gaining himself a terrifying child shaped stalker is the equivalent of _ ah yes, do you require a drink with that? _ "His attention span is short but not _that _ short, especially as you seem to have made an impression."

Aidan stares at him. In the same calm tone, the man continues: "I'll attempt to talk him into not attacking you at first opportunity next meeting, but I suggest you get yourself a suitable distraction either way. Do you enjoy video games?"

"What," says Aidan. "Wait no. Um. Who are you. Who is he? What do you mean-- oh god is he going to _ track me down after this."_

The man inspects Aidan for a moment.

Then he says: "Oh yes" without mercy, and lights up his cigarette. The little flame sparks in Aidan's sight. The man remains perfectly, ordinarily human, despite how he's tingling the marrow of Aidan's _teeth_\-- and not because of the dizzying concussion of fear and adrenaline. "Again, video games. And pizza. Ice-cream will do just as well. Perhaps one of those interesting flashy cars that go fast.” The corner of his mouth tugs into a smile. "Relax, he won't skewer you." His eyes are laughing. "I don't think." 

_ Well that's great. _ Aidan thinks, a little hysterically. 

Then there's the sound of fluttering curtains, and Aidan is alone in the parking lot. 

**Author's Note:**

> Still the nichiest thing ive ever written; Raise your hand if you've read both A/S and A Net of Dawn and Bones and know whats going on. if not, well. Still leave a comment if there's anything you liked!!


End file.
